On March 23, 2000, Pres. Pasteur Bizimungu, a politically moderate Hutu, resigned. He had quarreled with the Tutsi-dominated ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, over several cabinet appointments. On April 22 the National Assembly confirmed Vice Pres. Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame as the new president. Some observers feared that the appointment of Kagame, a Tutsi, would weaken Rwanda’s fragile ethnic power-sharing arrangement.

Rwanda during the year continued its military involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Continuing a pattern begun in 1999, Rwandan and Ugandan troops clashed around the Congolese city of Kisangani in May and June. Both countries massed troops along their common border but pulled them back after a series of high-level meetings defused but did not resolve the crisis. Rwanda and Uganda supported different rebel groups fighting against Congo Pres. Laurent Kabila. In June the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding that both Rwanda and Uganda withdraw their forces.

Trials of those allegedly involved in the 1994 genocide continued throughout the year, both in Rwandan courts and at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanz. In February the Rwandan government announced that it would resume cooperation with the UN court. Rwanda severed the relationship in 1999 over the release on procedural grounds of a prominent genocide suspect. In August the UN tribunal began hearing the case of three former Rwandan media officials. They were accused of having used newspapers and radio to incite ethnic hatred. A Rwandan court acquitted Roman Catholic Bishop Augustin Misago of charges stemming from the genocide. His arrest in 1999 had strained Rwanda’s relations with the Vatican. In late October former prime minister Jean Kambanda tried to revoke a guilty plea he had entered in 1998, but his motion was rejected by the UN tribunal.

In a sign of their improving relationship, Rwanda concluded a number of financial agreements with the European Union. These included grants and loans valued at nearly €160 million (about $140 million) and targeted at infrastructure and poverty-reduction programs. In October the country became eligible for preferential trade relations with the U.S. under recently enacted Africa-trade legislation.